The present invention is generally related to business to business (B2B) document exchange and, more specifically, to the automated and secure exchange of electronic business documents.
Traditionally, the automated exchange of electronic procurement documents has been limited to large corporations. Complex, centralized software products and related support are used to handle transformations and connect the corporation with each of its trading partners. This may involve difficult network and firewall settings, and complex protocols.
By way of example, some of these behind the firewall solutions involve 1) choosing and purchasing a software solution, 2) selecting an integrator for setting up the solution, 3) investing in internal competencies training for maintenance and monitoring purposes (or contracting someone to do so), and 4) going through a new project for each new trading partner or business document flow to be implemented.
Some of these issues have been addressed using various SaaS (Software as a Service) solutions, but there are a number of issues remaining related to the centralized nature of such document exchanges, and the limited flexibility of such a model. Therefore, there may be a need in the art for a standardized solution for procurement document exchange with approved trading partners within trading communities.